Portfolio Visit 1

Today I visited Thoughtful, which is a design studio situated in the college. I met with graphic designer Stuart Price who was a really nice guy and I found out later also haled from my hometown of Wrexham (small world). Stuart was really easy to chat to and his first comment on opening my portfolio was how professional he thought the illustrators from our college were, which was nice to hear. I changed the order of my work this time to start with my pen and ink stuff and end with my more recent vector work to see what reaction I would get. Stuart immediately asked if I worked in pen and ink and I explained I'd been experimenting with it until recently and now preferred to work in illustrator. He said the one thing that stands out in my work is my love for character design and how he could imagine my Disney character coming to life. He also liked how I had included different poses and expressions to show how the character would translate into animation. He also liked my LWL Super8 cover and said the concept behind the image was really clever and also commented on how effective the cross-hatching looked. One piece that really grabbed his attention was the ice-cream illustration I did as part of my MP, Stuart thought this was my strongest piece and said he thought it would definitely win me editorial work. I asked his opinion on the colours as I wasn’t sure if they were really working and was surprised to hear he really liked them. He explained that as a designer he is naturally drawn to really bright colours and thought it would look great in a children’s book. Towards the end of the visit I chatted about the end of year show and told him about an idea I had to have my work printed onto Perspex with a colour wash on the wall behind it. Stuart thought this was a cool idea that would make my images look more 3D and at the same time look a little like an animation cell.